>> ten people must get a couple of grand in their bank account. >> for now we're going to continue working right here at fox news. that's it for us. fox news sunday is next. they're talking exclusively to chris wallace about benghazi and more. have a great day. i'm chris wallace. now house republicans will have a select committee investigate benghazi. after newly released e-mails raised more questions about the white house response. >> this document was not about benghazi. >> it was for the -- >> it wasn't her only prep. >> the american people to their credit, want to know the truth. this e-mail is proof positive they were manipulated. >> we'll talk about kelly ayotte, one of the senators leading the harj for answers, and answer schiff, a member of the house intelligence committee. then anemic first quarter economic growth, but good jobs

numbers reignite the debate over the state of our economy. we'll set down with fedex ceo fred smith and the former head of ubs bank robert wolf. plus, president obama seeks a united front on ukraine. >> the ukrainian government in kiev has followed through on the commitments that it made in geneva. we need russians to do the same. >> our sunday panel weighs in on growing questions about the president's foreign policy. and our power player of the week. brian stokes mitchell who has been called broadway's last leading man. ♪ dream the impossible dream to fight the unbeatable foe ♪ >> all are an on "fox news sunday." hello again from fox news in washington. the scandal over how president obama handled the benghazi terror attack that killed four americans got new traction this week. under court order the

administration had to release an e-mail from a top presidential advisor that indicates the white house helped shape susan rice's talking points when she appeared here and on other sunday talk shows five days after the attack. in those interviews rice claimed reaction to a video and ruled out a preplanned act of terror. joining us now from new hampshire senator kelly ayotte and here in studio california congressman adam schiff. house speaker boehner announced he will call for a creation of a select committee to investigate benghazi. senator ayotte, a year and a half after the attack, is it too late? >> well, chris, i don't think it's too to the bottom of this. i called for the creation of a select committee right after this attack, so i'm glad that the speaker has done that. the investigation to date, there's been important work done in the committees, but it's been disjointed. the latest revelation from the white house really tells us that we need this select committee. why is it that we're just

receiving this e-mail that really shows where the idea from the video came. the video was not in the talking points, but that's what ambassador rice pushed on your show and every sunday show. >> congressman schiff, you have said that the benghazi and you put it conspiracy theorys are a terrible distraction from the real issue, which is bringing the people who killed these four americans to justice. is this house committee part of that distraction, and how certain are you that democrats will participate and put since it's a select bipartisan committee, will put members on the committee? >> i think it's a huge waste of time. we've had four bipartisan investigations of this already, and i think it's driven by a couple of things. a republican conference that's so fractured, there's really only two things they agree on. they don't like obama care, and so we've had 50 votes on that. they do like to talk about benghazi, and we've had four investigations on that. i don't think it makes sense really for democrats to participate. i think it's just a tremendous

red herring and a waste of taxpayer resources, so i hope the speaker will reconsider, but it looks like he has bowed again to those from the farthest right from his conference. >> when you say it doesn't make sense for democrats to participate, you should the democrats should not appoint anyone to the special committee and let it simply be republicans holding this investigation? >> that's what i recommend. i don't know what our leadership will ultimately decide, but i don't think it makes sense for us to give this select committee any more credibility than it deserves, and, frankly, i don't think it deserves very much. we've tread down this path so many times, and in terms of this rhodes memo, if you look at this four-page memo, there's only two sentences that pertain to ben ghazi, which track exactly what the cia talking points were, so it's very hard to use this memo as some kind of a justification. >> let me pick up on that because for months literally months spokesman jay carney flatly denied that the white house had anything to do with the susan -- with the talking

points of susan rice used when she came here and on other sunday shows and blamed the attack on a protest of anti-muslim video that had spun out of control. let's take a look at those denials. >> it has been repeatedly said by some of the critics on this issue on the hill that the white house provided talking points. that has been categorically refuted. the only edits made by anyone here at the white house were stylistic and nonsubstantive. they corrected the description of the building where the facility in benghazi from consulate to diplomatic facility, and the like. >> but then this week under a court order the administration had to release this memo from white house advisor ben rhodes. under the list of goals for rice he wrote, "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an internet video and not a broader failure of policy." carney may have been right. they didn't edit the cia talking

points, but it tushz out ben rhodes and the white house had written their own talking points. >> they had written the talking points about what was going on in these protests in two dozen countries, and i think it's important to remember what ambassador rice was preparing for on your show and others. when she sat in this seat that i'm sitting in right now, benghazi was not the first question you asked or the second or third. it was t was actually the 14th question you asked, and that's not a criticism, but it's a reflection of the fact that the focus of your show, like many others, was these protests going on in 20 capitals around the country. >> are you exactly right. sir, i have the ben rhodes memo right here, and in it he says one of the goals that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm americans to justice. the only people who had been harmed, americans who had been harmed, at that point were the four americans who had been killed in benghazi. on another page he specifically refers to a report in the british newspaper about benghazi, so to say that this memo wasn't about benghazi is just not true, sir.

>> it's true that two sentences of the four-page memo are about benghazi, but those two sentences are exactly what the cia talking points said. that's exactly what susan rice -- >> no, because the cia had never talked about the video. >> well, what the cia said was that the protests in benghazi, and obviously to say i got that wrong were based on the protests inspired by the protests in cairo, which is what the ambassador said. those protests in cairo were inspired by the video. that's exactly what the ambassador said. that's exactly what the intelligence committee community believed at the time. that's what general petraeus briefed us on and director clapper. that's what was thought at that time. you can take issue with what the intelligence community did, but there's nothing that contradicts that in the rhodes memo. >> let me bring in senator ayotte, because jay carney says the same thing that you just heard from adam schiff, senator ayotte, which is that this memo, which just mentioned benghazi and talks about americans being harmed, was not about benghazi. take a look.

>> i can say again and again, and i know you can keep asking again and again. this document was not about benghazi. >> senator ayotte, do you buy that? >> chris, it doesn't pass the laugh test, but here's the problem. the cia testified before the house intel committee that, many of the, they did not put a causal connection between the attacks and the video, and, in fact, when that was said, that's not in the talking points anyway. the video story clearly came from the white house, and why did it make a difference? six weeks before an election pushing a story about a spontaneous reaction to a video, which is what ambassador rice said on your show and other shows, as a result of the attacks as opposed to a coordinate the terrorist attack is a very different narrative when you are trying to push that this was not a failure of broader failure of foreign policy. so there really isn't an explanation of why she connected it to the video. why the president and others connected it to the video even as late as september 20th.

that is inexplicable. i would ask congressman schiff, why did she connect it to the video, and, also, she came on your show, chris, and she also said that the consulate security was strong and significant. where was the evidence of that? we know that leading up to these attacks that there were a whole course of history that showed that there was a deteriorating affect on that consulate, and, yet, she went on your show and said that the security of the consulate was strong. look at the talking points and what it says about that. >> i want to get to a different point, and that is the fact that while the administration this first week kept saying this was not a preplanned terror attack, in fact, the people on the ground in libya and with direct responsibility kept saying it was. the cia station chief in libya said it was a terror attack. now we found out this week, so did the deputy intelligence director for africom.

here was his testimony. >> what we did know quite early on was this was a hostile action. this was no demonstration gone terribly awry. >> senator ayotte, why do you think it is the cia, the state department, and the white house ignored their people on the ground when they said this was not a terror attack? >> because the white house is pushing a political explanation leading up to an election. the president had been saying al qaeda was on the run. they were trying to push a narrative of strength in foreign policy. this did not fit their narrative. this is actually an indication of a broader failure of foreign policy. the light footprint policy. in fact, we know also that secretary dempsey -- excuse me secretary panetta and secretary dempsey knew right away it was a terror attack. that was not pushed by the administration. they were trying to push this spontaneous reaction that was out of their control. that's what -- that's significant. this should matter. >> we're running out of time,

senator ayotte, and i want to give -- before we move to ukraine, i want to give congressman schiff a chance to answer. the politics of this, one argument is that what the white house was doing here was trying to protect obama's re-election effort. another question, which i know some democrats have raised, is that this now is an effort to hurt hillary clinton before she runs for president if she does in 2016. >> well, i think that's clearly the case, but let me also address what the cia station chief said because we heard in the director's testimony that the station chief at cia thought that this didn't become as a protest for a couple of reasons, which the analysts didn't agree with. the first was he cited press reports that said there was no protest, but, in fact, there were press reports that said there was a protest. he also said he didn't believe the signals intelligence, and the signals intelligence indicated there was a protest. this is an important point that gets lost when everyone cites this station chief in tripoli. the station chief said that one

of the possible motivations he had to concede was the video. now, no one wants to mention that, but that was also the belief of the station chief. so i think what the deputy director said was that there was no interference by the white house, that it was their best assessment. general petraeus and others, the director, is that it began as a protest. >> i hate to rush you along, but i want to ask you both about ukraine because it's very important. this week president obama and german chancellor merkel said that they would impose tough sanctions on entire sectors of the russian economy. not only if russia invades ukraine, but also if russia disrupts the may 25th senator election. senator ayotte, you have introduced legislation to impose those sanctions not later, but right now. >> they need to be imposed now, chris. the bottom line is if we wait until the elections, it will be too late at that point. we already see the playbook of

what happened in crimea happening in eastern ukraine, and it's time to impose tougher sectoral sanctions to provide support for the ukrainian military, and if -- at this point russia is not getting the message, they're violating the so-called geneva agreement, and you have russian agents in ukraine fomating unrest and causing all the violence and really creating a situation right now that warrants tougher sanctions by this administration. >> briefly, congressman schiff, have the obama sanctions up to this point been too weak? >> well, look, i think we're going to ultimately need stronger sanctions. the challenge is not getting the administration to go along with the stronger sanctions. the challenge has been getting our european allies to do exactly that. it's going to affect their economy much more than ours, and any sectoral sanctions that we administer without the european that is they backfill aren't going to be effective. yes, i agree with the senator. i like to see stronger sanctions, but i want to see them done in concert with our allies, and our job is really to get them on board.

regrettably, i think they're going to be necessary, and we have to inflict a heavy penalty on russia for this kind of violation of its neighbor's sovereignty. >> congressman, senator, thank you both. thanks for coming in today. how big are this week's benghazi developments, and is creation of a house select committee a good idea? our sunday group will join that conversation. plus, what would you like to ask the panel about benghazi? go to facebook or twitter@fox news sunday, and we may use your question on the air. what's seattle's favorite noise? the puget sound! ♪ foghorn sounds loudly ♪ all right, never mind doesn't matter. this is a classic. what does an alien seamstress sew with? a space needle! ♪ foghorn sounds loudly continuously ♪ oh come off it captain! geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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recall, protests -- >> to prepare susan rice. >> correct, but you misstated it. in fact, it was e@licitly not about benghazi. >> well, things got a bit testy this week when the white house carney's claim the ben rhodes memo was not about benghazi, and it's team for our sunday group. brit hume, fellice, george will, aught o of the new book "a nice little place on the north side" about wrigley field at 100, and former democratic congresswoman jane harmon. we asked you for questions for the panel, and we fwot this on facebook from jeff goldstein who asked why have republicans hankdzed the investigation so badly? why wasn't a special committee appointed over a year ago? brit, how do you answer jeff and within a year and a half after this attack is appointing a select committee now a good idea? >> well, i think it's probably worth a try even though it's pretty late in the game. it's not at all clear that there

will be any buy-in from the democrats, and bipartisanship has always been a characteristic of these effective select committees, so we'll see. as for why it's gone so badly, it's because it was scattered over several committees. there's been some ineptitude and poor decisions taken. for example, the decision to have the committee of jurisdiction to do this was the principal one, but the investigations haven't been terribly effective, and it's left us with continuing mystery unresolved to this day. it's where did susan rice get the idea to go on the sunday shows and blame the whole thing on a video? we certainly believe now that it didn't come from the cia. jay carney says it didn't come from the white house. apparently has no responsibility whatever for anything. we get -- we think we may have gotten a hint of it from this e-ma e-mail, but it's still not clear. >> for months i think it's fair

to say that john boehner didn't want to do this for a variety of reasons. it might look too political. it might seem to promise more than the committee could absolutely actually deliver. i think there was also a concern that the committee would be seen as investigating benghazi instead of talking about jobs and education and health care and things that directly affect people's lives. ellise, what change snd. >> i think this reflects a frustration on speaker boehner's part about how the investigation has been aincluded by some of his deputies, including darrell issa, who has been the one basically in charge in doing the most work on the benghazi investigation. i think by now establishing a select committee, boehner can per size more control over the process and be able to move forward with what republicans see as this revelation in the rhodes e-mail. >> what do you make -- maybe you have done some reporting on this. i thought it was very not resting that adam schiff participate in this, which really is going to change it if this is just a republican

committee and not a bipartisan committee. >> that's right. well, there are politics on all sides of this, and i think democrats see an opportunity here to make the committee look as political as they believe it @%m inherently. by not participating, that makes republicans look bad, and so democrats may, in fact, do that. we'll find out probably this week. >> the big development this week was, of course, the forced release of this ben rhodes e-mail that seems to contradict white house lamz that they had absolutely nothing to do with susan rice coming on fox news sunday and the other shows and talking about a video. it's been called the smoking gun. our colleague charles krauthammer compared it to the nixon tapes. >> rather less than the watergate tapes that showed the president at the heart of a crime wave, raising hush money and all the rest. this is a memo pushing a narrative that we now know to be false, that he should have known to be false at the time, that he probably did know was false, and, therefore, the memo was

meritricious. that's just one of the subjects if there is to be a committee should be investigated. why were we deeply embroiled in libya's civil war in the first place. illegally in my judgment. was there adequate security in benghazi? obviously not. third, should the military have been able to respond when the attack was underway? that's an intermural argument q:ujáp& lovel poured kerosene on. intelligence chief of africon that said he thought we should have responded. >> it now comes to the video that strikes me as not the most important of the topics and the committee. we certainly made news this morning with talking to mr. schiff. i do not know why at all any democrat would want to participate in this, by boycott it, it becomes a redundant and exercise, and it's only a matter of time before democrats raise the following question.

would there be a select committee if it didn't want to have the power to subpoena the former secretary of state hillary clinton for obviously reasons pertainingñto presidential politics? >> congresswoman harmon. >> well, chris, a little additional fact, which is, i believe, a couple days ago darrell issa subpoenaed john kerry, who during the benghazi time was a member of the united states senate. when is he due to be in mexico ding some serious work. this is a circus. >> wait. >> this is  -- >> but, excuse me, the reason they have asked him to testify is because of the fact that last august the issa committee -- can you argue whether or not john kerry should be subpoenaed, but it wasn't about the attack. it was about something he was in control of. >> he shouldn't be subpoenaed, and i don't know whether this all leads to hillary clinton or some way to embarrass her during the election. >> since you brought it up, can

you explain why it was that when the house committee subpoenas all the benghazi documents, they didn't turnover the rhodes memo, but when a court judge orders them to do it, they turnover the ben rhodes document. >> no, i can't explain it. there may be some claim of executive privilege. i think it's posed a political opportunity right at the moment. let me make a couple of comments on benghazi. i know something about this, and the day after the susan rice appearances, i -- or the day after the event i was meeting with some senior intelligence committee folks because i still advise in some capacities on boards to some of our agencies, and i think there was legitimate confusion. i agree about the point that the video was in egypt, and nobody really knew what the facts were, but i'm reading from the ben rhodes memo, which i have never seen before, and it said we're not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the u.s. mission in benghazi was planned or

imminent, and i think that was accurate. >> because we didn't have actionable intelligence about 9/11. that doesn't mean it didn't happen. >> no, it doesn't mean it didn't happen. >> it doesn't mean it wasn't a terror attack. >> by the way, this was an intelligence failure, but it wasn't a conspiracy, and there aren't aliens in area 51 and vince foster wasn't murdered. it's time to move on and focus and other problems that affect the voters. >> it wasn't a conspiracy in the united states to mount the benghazi attack. that's not the question. the question was whether any aftermath of the attack when the administration sent the u.n. ambassador out to explain it to everybody and she did so falsely that there wasn't a conspiracy to create the false talking points that she used. i'm not talking about the cia talking points. i'm talking about the talking points used on that program that day, which were monumentally misleading and/or and have since been shown to be false and based on no intelligence of any consequence that we know of.

>> my answer to that is, no, there wasn't a conspiracy. they didn't have turned out to be accurate. >> how did it happen? >> i think that people made -- at the time their best guess at the facts. >> where did the idea that the video had anything to do with benghazi come from? >> where did it come from? >> yeah. >> i think it wam from people who weren't sure about tshg but i would not say -- >> can you identify -- can you identify any cia information? can you identify -- >> ben talks about the movie five times in this memo. >> my view is having been around at the time that this was not deliberately misleading. it turned out to be wrong, but it was not deliberately misleading. >> on that, we're going to take a break. we'll see you all a little later. i don't think we're going to solve this now. incidentally, for more, join brett baier for fox news reporting. benghazi, white house coverup revealed. it's a question mark. tonight at 9:00 eastern on the fox news channel. don't miss it.

and what do you think about the benghazi scandal? join the conversation on fachook with other fns viewers. when we come back, mixed news this week about the economy. we'll sit down with two top ceos to discuss the state of the recovery. okay, listen up! i'm re-workin' the menu. mayo? corn dogs? you are so outta here! aah! [ female announcer ] the complete balanced nutrition of great-tasting ensure. 24 vitamins and minerals, antioxidants, and 9 grams of protein. [ bottle ] ensure®. nutrition inharge™. feel like a knot. how can i ease this pain? (man) when i can't go, it's like bricks piling up. i wish i could find some relief. (announcer) ask your doctor about linzess-- a once-daily capsule for adults with ibs with constipation

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>> we got a lot of numbers about the economy it week, ut not a clear picture of we stand. to help sort it out we brought in two of america's leading executives. from memphis, the chairman of fedex, frederick w. smith. and from new york the former head of ubs bank and now of the firm 32 advisors, robert wolf. gentlemen, let's run through the numbers we got this week. the economy created 288,000 jobs in april, and the unemployment rate fell to 6.3%, but that was largely because the work force dropped by 806,000 people to a three-decade low of 62.8% participation in the labor force, and in the first three months of this year gdp growth

was almost nonexistent. .1%. mr. smith, with all of that as prelude, where is the economy? >> well, i think the economy is getting better based on what we're seeing. the jobs number last friday was good at 288,000 people added to the payrolls, but as you said, a lot of people withdrew from the labor market. our internal forecast is about 2.5% gdp this year, rising to about 3.5% in calendar year 2015. >> mr. wolf, your view? what is the state of our economy right now? >> well, i would say -- i would agree. i think it's getting better. i think you have to discount gdp significantly. the weather was the worst in 60 years other than 1976 and 1978. 288,000 was a very good number as well as the revision, and

it's 50 straight months of private sector job gains. i would say the trend is getting better, but certainly nervous about the participation rate. >> but, you know, gentlemen, this isn't just one month or one quarter. i know people have talked about the bad winter. i'm wonder if anything you worry about global cooling now. let's look at the record because average growth over the 19 quarters of this recovery of the obama recovery is 2.2% per quarter with total growth over the 19 quarters of 11.1%. the average for all recovery since 1960 is 4.1% per quarter with total growth of 21.1%, or basically about double what we're seeing in this recovery. question, mr. wolf, why is this recovery so weak? >> well, i would say it differently. normally post recovery post the recession, the recovery is 50% gains come from housing and construction, which that took the first two years to really get through the slack and now

you see a housing recovery starting to come around. i would say it's not a normal recovery, but i actually think 2%, 2.5% is where we've been kind of chugging along. i mean, obviously gdp last year we came as high as 3.4%. most economists think it's going to be off 2.5%, but i think we're going to need housing back. we're going to need manufacturing back. the truth is we're in a bit of a technical revolution here, so i do think that it's taking productivity gains which actually impacts, you know, obviously employment as well. >> mr. smith, i want to ask you also for your historical perspective. i was checking out during the reagan recovery in 1983 and 1984 growth per quarter was 4.9% as compared to 2.2% in the obama recovery. >> well, i think there are a couple of things that you got to pay attention to in the reagan years. the amount of united states gdp that was related to

international trade was much smaller than it is today. it's about 30% today. u.s. corporations have invested a lot overseas because the returns are higher, and our tax code in the united states does not reward investment, and investment in capital equipment and software is what creates jobs. if you plot job creation and capital investment, both public and private infrastructure, they look like railroad tracks. it's about 94% correlation. we're not spending on infrastructure. we're down to the lowest level since 1947 in that regard. primarily, it's the lack of investment. certainly that would include residential recently. you've seen very bad balance of payments, deficits to buy oil and with china and japan for many years. some of those are now turning around a bit.

>> let me -- >> chris. >> let me just interrupt here because i want to get to this question of policy and what's the best way to boost growth going forward because this week the senate, senate republicans, filibustered and blocked an increase in the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour now to $10 .10 an hour by the year 2016. president obama says this is one more case of republicans refusing to look out for the middle class. take a look. >> they said no to raising the minimum wage, no to equal pay for equal work, and no to restoring the unemployment insurance they let expire for more than two million americans looking for a new job. >> mr. smith, are those measures as well as what the president calls investment, what other people call spending, as well as higher taxes on the wealthy, are those the right ways to get this economy going and to boost growth and boost jobs? >> in my opinion, chris, the

most important thing that the obama administration has done since the financial crisis was to put in place so-called bonus depreciation. that's the ability to write off capital investment when you make it rather than wait many years to get your money back. the kennedy administration put in an investment tax credit, so i think part of the problem is we talk about everything as an investment when it's really education when it comes to people and so forth. it's investment and capital equipment and software and infrastructure that drives the jobs in the united states. i think one -- >> mr. smith, like the minimum wage, is that good or bad for the economy? >> well, you know, the reason the republicans, i think, voted against it was because the cbo said it would cost 500,000 jobs,

and there are other studies, harvard, m. i.t. that said it's not so meaningful. what it will do is it will reduce employment of lower skilled people on a go forward basis. >> mr. wolf, i'm going to reference actually the nonport zan congressional budget office because it had a couple of findings. on the one hand it said that if you increase the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016, it would move 900,000 people above the poverty line, but it also said it would cost 500,000 jobs. let me ask you the same question. raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits, more spending, higher taxes on the wealthy, are those the right or wrong ways to get this economy going faster? >> let me answer both. let me answer on the growth side first. one, this president is for infrastructure spent and for free trade both with europe and asia and pro tax reform, and those are positive things to get the economy going. with respect to minimum wage, yes, i saw the cbo reported.

it also said that minimum wage would increase aing gat demand in this country, which would obviously help our gdp. i think the other aspect of the cbo report, if you are positive in using the cbo report on the unemployment, it also said that the affordable care act helps employment because it helps mobility. you know, there's a lot of different tracks going around. it's certainly -- the one thing about minimum wage is it may impact up to 25 million people in a positive way. 15 million direct. 10 million indirect. those are all good things for this country. >> mr. smith, i'm going to -- since mr. wolf brought up obama care, i did want to ask you about that as well. not, you know, on the health care side or the legitimate social policy side, but as a matter of the economy, is obama care a drag on the economy or a boost to the me? >> well, i think the obama care affect on the economy over a period of time will be largely

neutral when it's caused people like small business people and for that matter fedex to do for their families is to change the structure of our health care so there's much more patient involvement, higher deductibles, higher co-pays. so that will offset to some degree the increased transfers to the people that did not have health care. i think overall it will be relatively neutral in the short-term, longer term maybe more problematic. >> mr. smith, mr. wolf, we're going to have to leave it there. thank you so much for joining us today. >> thank you. >> up next, president obama threatens more sanctions against russia and defends his foreign policy. our sunday group will take up that conversation. female announcer: sleep train's interest free for 3 event

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comcast business built for business. >> the russian leadership must know that if it continues to destabilize eastern ukraine and disrupt this month's presidential election, we will move quickly on additional steps. that includes further sanctions that will impose greater costs. >> president obama after a meeting with german chancellor merkel promising tougher economic sanctions if russia does not change course in ukraine. we're back now with the panel. the violence, i think it's fair to say, is only increasing in eastern ukraine with dozens killed in the last couple of days. the ukrainian forces try to oust pro-russian separatists who have seized government buildings and russian president putin calling that a criminal act. it seems we are headed bit by bit towards a showdown. >> it seems we are, and it does not appear that the sanctions that have been imposed so far

have deterred vladimir putin in my meaningful way, which raises the question of, okay, what additional sanctions of the kind the president has described will likely be imposed and how soon? what would trigger them? if we are talking about sectoral sanctions which would hit the russian economy as a whole much harder than anything that has been done so far, it's not clear he has key players in europe on board with him to do that, and it's not clear whether he can get that to happen with only regarding ukraine. now, you know, the situation expands to other nations, including nations like the baltics which are members of nato. that might change, but so far not so good. >> meanwhile, the "wall street journal" had a poll this week that had some interesting numbers about all of this. it showed only 37% approve of president obama's handling of ukraine while 47% want the u.s. to be less active on the world stage. ellise, the way i read thñ poll

is people are saying we don't like getting pushed around by the russians, but we don't want to be any more engaged on the world stage. >> that's true. polls also show that the public supports sanctions, including tough sectoral sanctions, but not funneling weapons to the ukrainians. in a sense the public is on obama's side, but what i feel is that they do not understand his approach and that's one of the reasons why they're having trouble getting behind it. >> during his trip to asia, president obama was asked about his foreign policy, which some call cautious and incremental, and he defended it quite viscerally. here was part of his defense. >> that may not always be sexy. that may not always attract a lot of attention and it doesn't make for good argument on sunday morning shows, but it avoids errors. you hit singles.

you hit doubles. every once in a while we may be able to hit a home run. >> well, we thought it might be a good argument to have on a sunday morning talk show. george, it was not exactly a reagan-esque call to arms, was it? >> no. he says he is going to play what's called in baseball small ball. get them on, get them over. the point is you advance 90 feet. the question is where is he advancing? egypt recently sentenced 529 people to death for one killing. 683 people to death for another. iran is heading for what -- a status that bebe netanyahu calls a nuclear threshold state. that's a screwdriver turn away from having nuclear weapons. assaad, who the president said must go, is gearing up to get elected to another seven-year term. the israeli-palestinian talks have collapsed. china is rampanto

angela merkel and the president drew another red line. they said if you interfere with the march -- the may 25th presidential election, there will be terrible consequences. we'll see if this red line fairs better than the others have. >> let's do this same tour with you, congressman. when you look at iran and syria and ukraine and the breakdown of the middle east peace talks, it appears, is this president sending a message of strength and of u.s. resolve? >> well, american leadership is indispensable. i think we should forget about pivots and we should lead in parts of the world where our leadership is needed. i hear it all the time when i travel around. i think in the case of ukraine, it's good that we have talked about sectoral sanctions. i think we ought to do them. i think we ought to do them now. >> can i interrupt for a second? just so we explain, what the administration has been doing are targeted sanctions against individuals or against

individual banks or institutions. sectoral sanctions would be sanctions against the entire manager sector or the entire mining sector. >> we should pick our targets faflly. angela merkel was here friday. i was in a small meeting with her. she's trying to pull europe along. she's a great leader in europe. let's give a shout-out to her. we do need europe pulled along. focussing, for example, on certain financial institutions. someone -- a senior russian official speaking at the wilson center the other day said we ought to yank the visas of all the duma members in russia so they can't go to the south of france and in miami. that would really get their attention. there are smart ways to do this. in addition to that, though -- >> can i interrupt for a second? you say you were in a meeting with angela merkel. does she support? because the perception has been that germany, which has a lot of trade with russia, and particularly dependence on energy, on oil and gas, would not support sectoral sanctions at this point. >> well, she said she talked about how she's trying to move other countries in europe along.

i mean, there are -- >> well, i think her country is -- or at least she is closer to this, and she did stand in unity with president obama talking about this. there does have to be an off ramp to de-escalate this. i don't think we hoos to get in a war with russia. we have to bolster nato. that's something they talked about too. we have to find a way to achieve a pluralist, noncorrupt government in ukraine through these elections, and we have to support trade. at least i think so. this trade regime of the u.s. and europe. >> what makes you think that putin wants -- >> putin personally, certainly the information everybody seems to have is that there is no advantage to russia in having an all-out war in ukraine. our leverage is or economy against him. we are strong. he is a gas station with a lot of corruption surrounding him. we can avoid a worse outcome. certainly we have to bolster nato, and we do now have some

troops on the ground. europe ground, europe has to be on the ground just as much as we it's not going to turn out badly. you mentioned about the use of infusion of arms into the you can cranian forces. one reason of that is, a lot of

his supporters are agreeing with him. if he made a case for it. i bet those poll numbers would turn around almost overnight. and presidents who lead, almost as a rule will have the public following him. but you've got to lead, you can't hit small balls and doubles, and that is not working too well. >> do you think he can lead public opinion on, we're not talking about -- even in the most activist signal here, all we're talking about is sending something more than meals ready to eat, military rations to the ukrainian soldiers. >> only one in six can find you can crane on a map. there's a lot they need to do. >> that's what presidents can do, that's why presidential leadership is so important, he's got the biggest megaphone in the

world. the way we're going, there may be no ukraine to find on the map. >> the president is leading, but he just happens to be leading on a policy that the country says emphatically that it wants. it may not want the consequences of it, but it wants the policy. they held the white house correspondent, where we -- as usual u president obama spoke poking fun at ihimself, as well as the media. >> the koch brothers used the shadowy right wing organization as a front, hello fox news. i'm just kidding. let's face the facts, you'll miss me when i'm gone.

it will be harder to convince the american people that hillary was born in kenya. >> it's always better to be mentioned at those dinners than not to be mentioned. up next, our power player of the week. i bought a car, over and tells you, and you're like. a good deal or not. looking at truecar.com. there's no buyer's remorse. save time, save money, and never overpay. visit truecar.com

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the candidate center holds it's spring gala tonight to raise money for performances and educational programs. they're doing a special playing. >> i analyzed the song very -- with great detail before i even start singing it, i analyze the lyrics, i analyze the rhyme scheme. >> reporter: brian stock exchange pic exchange -- ♪ to dream the impossible dream

♪ >> as i was reading the lyrics to the song, i thought, wait, there's actually a question and an answer kind of in the song, an implied question, to dream, what? the impossible dream. to fight what? the imbeatable foe. >> reporter: mitchell's big break on broadway came in 1998 when he orange natured the role of cole house walker. >> the show's going to win the tony awards and then lion king opened. >> reporter: mitchell wound win his tony two years later in "kiss me kate." >> for one thing, i had this big

baritone sound that's kind of out of fashion now in the recording world. >> reporter: but that's one way in which he differs from everyone else who's ever heard him. >> i hate listening to myself sing. >> why on earth? >> because i only hear the mistakes. >> reporter: 15 years ago, mitchell became close friends with ted kennedy, who was a big fan of mitchell's. >> we would go into this old duet together. >> reporter: after kennedy's death, mitchell sang at his memorial service. ♪ that one man scorned and covered with scars ♪ ♪ still. >> which made it even more fitting that mitchell would star for the annual gala for the kennedy center, and would create even one more enchanted evening.

>> the audience is the last character of the show that's introduced because they tell you, what's funny, what's not. ♪ once you have found her ♪ never let her go >> it becomes this huge conversation with all of these people that are involved and it turns into something greater than you ever hoped or ever dreamed. that's the joy and the excitement of doing it. >> if you want to hear brian stokes mitchell, he'll be appearing in "shakespeare in the park" in new york city city.

we' >> newly released benghazi e-mails put the white house back on the defense and raised big questions for hillary clinton as she gears up for 2016. harry reid in the hot seat as the senate demands a vote on the keystone pipeline. and welcome to "the welcome to the journal, editorial report, fresh questions this week about the obama administration's efforts to shape